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Discouragement   Listen
noun
Discouragement  n.  
1.
The act of discouraging, or the state of being discouraged; depression or weakening of confidence; dejection.
2.
That which discourages; that which deters, or tends to deter, from an undertaking, or from the prosecution of anything; a determent; as, the revolution was commenced under every possible discouragement. "Discouragements from vice."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Discouragement" Quotes from Famous Books



... in a tone of positive discouragement, "I don't know what I will do if I have to undo another one of Tom Mayberry's prescriptions to-day. But you couldn't expect a man to untangle a children quirk like that; and oil woulder been the thing for the cherry stones in children's stomachs, but not for ones throwed on the ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess

... success and merit. When he compared the abundance of these works, tossed off apparently as in play, and the young man's cheerful evenness of temper with his own torn, distracted existence, a feeling came upon him that he had never before had, the feeling that he was an outcast, a feeling of discouragement and helpless defeat. While the light of the candles glided over the creations of the man who had infused form and soul into the formless clay, a voice ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... most of the new-comers. Here, as elsewhere, there was much sickness and death. Owing to the dearth of provisions it was found necessary to free all the servants sent over within the last two years at a cost of L16 or L20 each. The discouragement was reflected in the return to England within a few months of more than a hundred persons in the ships that ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler

... upon them. This explains the reason of those fitful outbursts of joy and grief that pass in quick succession. Those puerile fears, followed by hopes, without rule or aim, that vain confidence giving place to sad discouragement. Those despondent feelings after moments of zealous fever, during which we seem to be able to do and attempt everything. Here we find the solution of those sudden and varied shades of temperament ...
— Serious Hours of a Young Lady • Charles Sainte-Foi

... you [Britons] are doing a great deal to soften and enliven material existence in this melancholy, sunburnt country of ours, and certainly you are so far successful that you are bringing the ascetic idea into discouragement and, with the younger folk, into contempt."[109] Welcome to the new joy of living, all honour to the old ascetics, and may a still ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison

... worships shall not be ignorant of my determined purpose in the same, with the reasons that haue perswaded me thereunto; I haue thought good to aduertise you thereof, trusting that your worships will weigh them, as I vprightly and plainly meane them. And not for any feare or discouragement that I haue of my selfe by the raging of the stormes of the sea, for that (I thanke the Lord) these haue not beene the first that I haue abiden, neither trust I they shalbe the last. First the state of the ship, in which, though I thinke not but M. Pet can do ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt

... peculiarly unfortunate in lighting on only one class of men under the present regime, but whether it be in France, Switzerland, Belgium, or Italy, that I have come across Frenchmen and had a talk with them of late years, I have noticed a prevailing discouragement, a pessimism, that certainly was absent in former days. The very character of a French table d'hote is changed. Instead of Gallic vivacity, merriment, and general conversation, such as one was wont to find there, one encounters ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... long moment of utter discouragement. There was so much he had to know before he could lead the Corps in clearing up this mess. There had been so many mentions of a "main plot" that he knew this illegal mining and slavery was but a small part of what was ... what must be ... ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans

... his greatest personal satisfaction secured. The economic experimental psychology offers no more inspiring idea than this adjustment of work and psyche by which mental dissatisfaction in the work, mental depression and discouragement, may be replaced in our social community by overflowing joy and perfect ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... much. He went as rarely as possible to Maurice Roger's house. Maurice had decidedly turned out to be a good husband, and was fond of his home and playing with his little boy. Every time that Amedee saw Maria it meant several days of discouragement, sorrow, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the disinterested objectivity have disappeared: the dialogue of the mind with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... Bereft of his property—in the midst of hostile Indians, who might change their minds, return, and massacre him and his party—many hundred miles from home, or from any settlement of whites—a wide desert to be traversed—the further discouragement that there was no object for his going home, now that he was stripped of all his trading-stock—perhaps to be laughed at on his return—no prospect of satisfaction or indemnity, for he well knew that his government would send out no expedition to revenge so humble an individual ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... forcibly reminded the hearer of the unfortunate state just mentioned; and to the cultured, sensitive members of the race represented, these reminders were always of the most painful nature. And yet such persons could not have the heart to utter words of discouragement to an enterprise having an object so noble. They, like all others, could not but enjoy the rich melody and harmony of the wonderful Jubilee voices. They, too, often listened spell-bound; and when inclined, as at times they were, to murmur, the inspiriting ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter

... This tone of discouragement, which Klesmer had hoped might suffice without anything more unpleasant, roused some resistance in Gwendolen. With a slight turn of her head away from him, and an air of pique, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot

... the loss of the old objects of adoration and trust, have inspired utterances in every key of gloom, impotence, despondency verging toward suicide. Schopenhauer has formulated a philosophy of pessimism, and through a host of the minor story-tellers and versifiers runs the note of discouragement and abandonment. The most dangerous alliance which besets man is that between Sensuality and Unbelief, whispering together in his ear, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!" Sometimes unbelief is at the widest remove from sensuality; it may go with pure devotion to truth and thirst ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... Discouragement is an inclination to give up all attempts after the devout life, in consequence of the difficulties by which it is beset, and our already numerous failures in it. We lose heart; and partly in ill-temper, partly in real doubt of our own ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston

... thing. The divine glow and grace of youth would never again come to her, while this vigorous and joyous girl would grow in womanly charm from month to month. "She is going to be very beautiful," she admitted; and even in the midst of her own discouragement she could not but admire Bertha's skill with the horse. She rode in the manner of a cowboy, holding her hands high and guiding her horse by pulling the reins across his neck. Ben was receiving lessons from ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... of the cosy bed he would now be enjoying if he had only taken his mother's advice, and he felt almost like getting up in the night and stealing away on the road to the north. But, always a sensible lad, Archie realised that this discouragement could not last, and he lost himself in sleep, looking forward three days, when his week should be up, and he would be on his way to the city, with four dollars more to add ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison

... 'Not that I believe it will do an atom of good. If there is a love affair in the matter, opposition is the very life of them. Don't you remember our own case?' he asked, referring, with a smile, to the old romance which had kept them true through years of opposition and discouragement. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... the reader to my heart, that shall lead him into its recesses; and enable him to conceive its entire sensations? That Turl, from whom I imagined I had met so much discouragement, whose scrutinizing eye led him to examine with such severity, and whose firm understanding possessed such powers of right decision, that he should not only sympathize with me but partake in my best hopes, and countenance me in my soul's dearest pursuit, that Turl should feel and act thus, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... varlets who Do thoughts imprint, have o'er my head direct Appealed to those who may dire action take, And thus belittlement on me bestow? Carpen: My Liege, 'tis so. From words which from thy mouth Did flow, discouragement arose, and so, To guard their welfare, they did quickly act And to their order did make strong appeal. Francos: Carpen disloyalty to those in pow'r Shall meet its proper penalty, and they Who voiced it must ...
— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... John had come almost to the point of discouragement. His health was so poor that he did not know a well moment; and besides, his longing soul was still unsatisfied. He had always desired to be good and kind to all; but he did not know how to rise to a nobler plane of conduct than that on which he was living. He judged men by their ...
— How John Became a Man • Isabel C. Byrum

... met with the same 'frolic welcome;' the attempts to escape from evil, whether Indian or Greek, have ended in flight from the battle-field; it remains to us to throw aside the youthful over-confidence and the no less youthful discouragement of nonage. We are grown men, and ...
— The Whence and the Whither of Man • John Mason Tyler

... and Poughkeepsie. It was raining furiously, and my horse, already weary with long travel, gave unmistakable signs of discouragement. I was, therefore, greatly relieved when, in the most desolate part of the road, I espied rising before me the dim outlines of a house, and was correspondingly disappointed when, upon riding forward, I perceived ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... discouragement and the apprehension caused by unduly heavy taxation of incomes will not only act as a drag on enterprise and constructive activity, but will make it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, for corporations to sell securities in sufficient volume and thus to obtain adequate ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn

... craving from her dowry to herself, and to feel that he really wanted something which in any way could add to his material comfort, was, in itself the most powerful stimulus, that Vivian Standish had ever known. The fact that he worked out his own gratification sustained him through many a discouragement; may be it will cause no one to wonder either, for when one has gone through fire and water for someone else, one's heart clings almost involuntarily to him ever after, one's interest never dies out where his ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... "does one feel after one has engaged for a large work. In the beginning of my translating the 'Iliad', I wished anybody would hang me a hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first that I often used to dream of it and do sometimes still." In spite of his discouragement, however, and of the ill health which so constantly beset him, Pope fell gallantly upon his task, and as time went on came almost to enjoy it. He used to translate thirty or forty verses in the morning before rising and, in his own characteristic phrase, "piddled ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... quaint gravity which was peculiar to him; but he was already conscious of a sense of discouragement. Her composure was a bad sign—from ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... the place stirred Damaris' spirit of enquiry and adventure! She wanted to go there, to examine, to learn how people lived cut off from the mainland for hours twice every day and night. But her early attempts at investigation met with prompt discouragement from both her nurse and her aunt, Felicia Verity. And Damaris was not of the disposition which plots, wheedles, and teases to obtain what it wants; still less screams for the desired object until for very weariness resistance yields. Either she submitted without murmuring or fearlessly ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... 1886, accompanied by Dr. Hubbell, the journey was undertaken. We proceeded to Albany, Texas, made headquarters—traveled over the stricken counties, found wretchedness, hunger, thirst, cold, heart-breaking discouragement. The third year of drought was upon them, and the good people of that great State, misled by its press, its press in turn misled by the speculators, innocently discredited every report of distress, and amused themselves by little sly innuendoes and ...
— A Story of the Red Cross - Glimpses of Field Work • Clara Barton

... amount of work required to make a good axe-helve—I mean to make it according to one's standard. I had times of humorous discouragement and times of high elation when it seemed to me I could not work fast enough. Weeks passed when I did not touch the helve but left it standing quietly in the corner. Once or twice I took it out and walked about with it as a sort of cane, much to the secret amusement, ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson

... imperturbable coolness in battle. Both have unmistakable advantages and disadvantages. Enthusiasm impels to the performance of great actions: the difficulty is in maintaining it constantly; and, when discouragement succeeds it, ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... he had been beaten in a law-suit, and she had waited for him to come to her in his discouragement for help and comfort. It was thus he had come to her to-day. How helpless he was! What ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... books are honeycombed with appeals to God as his guide and protector; he believed that God was with him in "Darkest Africa," would see him through at the price of how many negro murders it mattered not, warding off fever, discouragement, starvation, and standing ever ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... sounded more faint, as if from fatigue or discouragement. It seemed to me that the blade against my wrist had relaxed its menace of pressure and just rested in position. I seemed to read my lady's weariness in the slackened vigilance. Perhaps she was really frightened, now that her brave attempt to ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... not his first experience of the kind; but he had met the other trials with the high courage of a light heart and a free mind. It was only within the last two days that he had been weighed down by discouragement, by heaviness of heart, and depression of mind. He was so weary and absorbed now in disheartened thought, that he did not hear Toby's approach, and he was startled when Father Orin appeared in the open door. He greeted him with a warmly outstretched ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks

... our own country the advocates of our cause know no discouragement or disappointment. The seed planted by the pioneers of the woman's rights movement is continuously bearing fruit in the educational, industrial and social opportunities for the women of today; these in turn presage the full harvest—political ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... became weary. And now the North increased by ever so little the pressure against them, sharpening the cold by a trifle; adding a few flakes' weight to the snow they must lift on their shoes; throwing into the vista before them a deeper, chillier tone of gray discouragement; intensifying the loneliness; giving to the winds of desolation a voice. Well the great antagonist knew she could not thus stop these men, but so, little by little, she ground them down, wore away the excess of their vitality, reduced them to grim plodding, so that at the moment ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... looked at this name, wrote a page or two, and inserted them. But his task seemed to afford him little satisfaction; his face wore an expression not remote from discouragement; none knew better than he the actual value, for his purpose, of the material before him. The chaff, froth, bubble of the case!—almost contemptuously he regarded it. Had he sought the unattainable? Certainly he had left no stone unturned, no stone, and yet the head and front of what ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham

... enabled him to keep up good heart. It is too generally the case that people are content to live as if they were sure of constantly retaining their health, and never losing their employment. When a reverse does come, they are at once plunged into discouragement, and feel the necessity of doing something immediately. There is only one way of fending off such an embarrassment; and that is, to resolve, whatever may be the amount of one's income, to lay aside some part to serve as a reliance in time ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... feeling at the beginning of a course of study, is a feeling of discouragement. Nearly all the studies are new, and you enter upon each with fresh eagerness. Now, it is in the nature of every study while it is new, to seem boundless. Under the guiding hand of a skilful teacher, its limits and capabilities are stretched out in one direction and another, ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... this time, brought the business into sound trim; and the elder, left free to follow his own ingenious devices, had done much to enhance the character of the factory. As an ingenious man, he had necessarily to encounter every discouragement that the ruling powers for a length of time had been able by any means to put in the way of this class of culprits; but that was only reasonable self-defence in the powers, since How to do it must obviously be regarded as the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... muscles relaxed, giving mind and body a release from tension. But his spine was as stiff as ever as he left the closet, and he was even smiling to give the impression that the news from the capital was favorable. When the telegraphers' jaws had dropped as the reports of casualties came in, when discouragement lengthened the faces around him and whispered in the very breezes from the fields of the dead, he had automatically maintained his confident mien. Any sign of weakening would be ruinous in its effect on his subordinates. ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... that I have known of was that of the women of Minnesota for the Minnesota National Forest. It was a superb success, and we have that forest to-day. I have known of no case of persistent agitation under discouragement finer in a good many ways than the fight that the women of California have made to save the great grove of Calaveras big trees. As a result the Government has taken possession of that forest and will preserve it for ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... Abwees sat about the board of a lumbermen's hotel, filled with house-flies and slatternly waiter-girls, who talked familiarly while they served greasy food. The Abwees were yet sore in their minds at the thoughts of the smelly beds up-stairs, and discouragement sat deeply on their souls. But ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington

... have to offer to adventurers on the above subject, is not to suffer discouragement by concluding that bad weather only is to be found on the coast of New South Wales, where the whales have hitherto been seen. Tempests happen sometimes there, as in other seas, but let them feel assured that there are in every month of the year many days in which ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench

... requirements is presented to the public at large without the waking of many sleeping dogs, and the stirring of many snapping fish, floating with open ears and eyes in many pools. An uneducated, blustering, obstinate man of one idea, having resentfully borne discouragement and wounded egotism for years, and suddenly confronting immense promise of success, is not unlikely to be prey easily harpooned. Joseph Hutchinson's rebound from despair to high and well- founded ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... tender, as it had been when they met. Cairy, lighting cigarette after cigarette, talked on, about himself. He was very despondent. He had made a hard fight for recognition; he thought he had won. And then had come discouragement after discouragement. It looked as if he should be obliged to accept an offer from a new magazine that was advertising its way into notice and do some articles for them. No, he would not go back to be Gossom's private mouthpiece at ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)

... they ever heard the like? I look upon man as a very selfish being, when placed in a religious office, to presume to resist the work of the Almighty; because He does not work by man's authority. I did not faint under discouragement, but ...
— Memoir of Old Elizabeth, A Coloured Woman • Anonymous

... which he found himself pleasantly seated. Waverley, whose life was a dream, gave ready way to the predominating impulse, and became the most lively of the party. He had at all times remarkable natural powers of conversation, though easily silenced by discouragement. On the present occasion, he piqued himself upon leaving on the minds of his companions a favourable impression of one who, under such disastrous circumstances, could sustain his misfortunes with ease and gaiety. His ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... friendly notes of travel; at first filled with gossip of the steamer, and later telling of excursions around Cairo. If they held any touch of feeling they seemed to show that she was sorry for him, and as she could not regard him in any way more calculated to increase his discouragement, he, in utter hopelessness, retreated to the solitude of the farm. In New York he left behind him two trunks filled with such garments as a man would need on board a steamer and in the early spring in Egypt. They had been packed and ...
— Once Upon A Time • Richard Harding Davis

... discouragement and cheer for those who accept the Wise Man's dictum that there is nothing new under the sun. In the one aspect, there seems little chance for the novice since the primary plots are really so few; but in the other view, fresh arrangements of old combinations are always possible for those who see ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... Weariness and discouragement inclined him to be somewhat reckless and brusque in his words and manner. Under the compulsion of circumstances she who would never graciously accord him opportunities must now be alone with him; but as a gentleman, he could not ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe

... grappled with it, and been crucified and worshipped by it, He might have been a Redeemer for the silent, stately, ancient world that was before He came, but He would have failed to be a Redeemer for this modern world—a world where the main inspiration and the main discouragement is the crowd, where every great problem and every great hope is one that deals with crowds. It is a world where, from the first day a man looks forth to move, he finds his feet and hands held by crowds. The sun rises over ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... morning and evening devotions to my own private closet, lest I should give offence and discouragement to so gay a temper, so unaccustomed (poor gentleman!) to acts of devotion and piety; whilst I met his household together, only on mornings and evenings of the Sabbath-day, to prepare them for their public duties in the one, and in hopes to confirm them in what they had heard ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... a sneak—Latisan is a runaway! Eck Flagg is next to a dead man!" Over and over he made those declarations, battering discouragement into their slow comprehension in order to win them to the Comas company. "And Latisan has thrown down real men for the sake of a girl! Do you want to get the Big Laugh when you ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... and yet another morning and as the father, the mother, the cousin who was almost brother to both, the assistants, and poor broken-hearted Susan, looked into each other's wan, worn faces, they found nothing there but discouragement, and almost ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... that remains of it is a mad population vainly seeking a shelter among its ruins, while anxiously looking for a solid and permanent refuge where they may begin life anew. You must not be surprised, then, at our discouragement and our impatience. We can wait no longer. Since tardy science has failed in her promises, we prefer to fall back on the old beliefs, which for centuries have sufficed for ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola

... commit an atrocity by writing to an overworked man on a subject which may seem to him of secondary importance. Still, to the soldiers out here, the said subject means encouragement or discouragement coming to them through the medium of their home letters,—so vital a factor in victory or failure that the thought emboldens ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... the inextricable disorder that prevailed aboard ship. The storm stayed with us until we made Brindisi, where we arrived at seven o'clock on the morning of the twenty-second. When Italy was sighted, the tiredness and discouragement disappeared as if by magic. Hand clappings, praise of France, promises of victory and of revenge, and absurd efforts to disembark everything at once—passengers and material. (Journal of Ensign Auge, ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne

... heavily water-logged that progress was very slow, but this was no discouragement, for their position improved minute by minute, and the men were so much cheered that they put plenty of spirit ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn

... learned that Harrison Miller was coming home, and that David was being brought back. She saw that telegram from Mr. Miller, and read into it failure and discouragement, and something more ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... or in discouragement? Which would get the upper hand, he or the secret? I was thus asking myself questions, and mechanically taking between my fingers the sheet of paper mysteriously disfigured with the incomprehensible succession of letters ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... once of a fox sparrow. Then I looked for a song sparrow,—badly startled, perhaps,—but found to my delight a white-throat. He was on the ground, but at my approach flew into a cedar. Here he drew in his head and sat perfectly still, the picture of discouragement. I could not blame him, but was glad, an hour later, to find him again on the ground, picking up his dinner. I leveled my glass at him and whistled his Peabody song (the simplest of all bird songs to imitate), but he moved not a feather. ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... he was the first who by his energy rose from the blow, and the only one qualified to repair it. His penetrating glance foresaw all the obstacles which would oppose the execution of his plans, the discouragement of the estates, the intrigues of hostile courts, the breaking up of the confederacy, the jealousy of the leaders, and the dislike of princes of the empire to submit to foreign authority. But even this deep insight into the existing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... Nevertheless, the usual veteran of other wars was found on board who was prepared to initiate all who were tempted into some of the mysteries of "banker" or "crown and anchor." This individual, however, met discouragement from the ship's police who, whenever opportunity offered, seized and confiscated his plant. "Two-up" and "House" were not then so popular as they became a ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett

... city by force, they now turned to negotiation. Unhappily, M. d'Ivoy, in command of the Huguenot garrison, was not proof against the seductive offers made him. Disregarding the remonstrances of his companions in arms, who pointed to the fact that the enemy had from day to day, through discouragement or from sheer exhaustion, relaxed their assaults, he consented (on the thirty-first of August) to surrender Bourges to the army that had so long thundered at its gates. D'Ivoy returned to Orleans, but Conde, accusing him of open perfidy, refused to see ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... protective; and in sober truth, if England now deplores the low industrial and commercial state of Ireland, she has only to look over her own statute-book, and see if ingenuity could have further gone in the way of discouragement and depression. When we add to these wrongs the bitter drop of the Irish Church Establishment, it is doubtless clear that an able advocate could make out a very telling case for the plaintiff, in that great case of Ireland vs. England ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... matter before his mother, in whose feminine instinct he had supreme confidence. With her, he met with instant discouragement. But in subsequent talks he found that her opposition was based not upon the possibilities inherent in the position, but on a mother's natural disinclination to be separated from one of her sons. In the case of Fanny Davenport's offer ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... at them, then slowly stretched out her hand, but soon let it fall again with an air of discouragement. Certainly the missing document was not in the ink-pot or the mucilage bottle. Yet something made her stoop again over the pad and subject it ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... five o'clock in the morning and day was beginning to break, when I asked myself where I was going. At that thought, which had not occurred to me before, I experienced a profound feeling of discouragement. I cast my eyes over the country, scanning the horizon. A sense of weakness took possession of me; I was exhausted with fatigue. I sat down in a chair and my ideas became confused; I bore my hand to my forehead and found it bathed in sweat. A violent fever made my limbs tremble; ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... increased by vast areas of burnt ground, from which rose clouds of dust and ashes—no gravel was here to arrest the onslaught of the wind upon the sand. Towards evening we were doomed to experience fresh discouragement, for in front of us, seen from rising ground, there stretched ridge upon ridge of barren sand, black from the charred remains of spinifex. To tackle those ridges in our then plight meant grave risks to be run, and that night the responsibility ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie

... knot, and somehow managed to look noticeably lovely and distinguished, in the gay assemblies. To brighten the black gown she wore a rope of pearls, looped twice about her white throat, and hanging far below her waist; pearls, as Mrs. Adams remarked in discouragement later, that "just made you feel what's the use! She could wear a kitchen apron with those pearls if she wanted to, everyone would know she could afford cloth ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris

... something to do with this. She rushed from her morning duties to the school; then at three o'clock rushed to Major Street; and from there, when it grew too dark to work, drove home to minister to her father. Probably her times of discouragement were times when she was a little tired. The thought was very far from her usually. In her healthy and happy youth, busy life, and mental and spiritual growth and thrift, Esther's wants seemed to be all ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... restored to Gideon Spilett that self-possession which he had lost in a moment of discouragement on feeling his great responsibility. He seated himself close to the bed. Cyrus Harding stood near. Pencroft had torn up his shirt, and was ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)

... of the professional generally, are beyond comparison with those of the ordinary amateur. To hunt successfully in the chaparral, requires a special genius. One must have exhaustless patience, tact trained by a lifetime of this sort of work, perseverance incapable of discouragement, the silence of an Indian, and in this phrase—when we are dealing with the skill of one who can make progress without sound through the tangles of the dry and stiff California chaparral—is involved an exercise of skill comparable only to the fineness ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various

... marriage, when there seemed no possibility of the marriage ever taking place. She encouraged him in his work, interested herself in all his actions, praised him for all his efforts, tried to be for him the guide and the star to which he could look in his moments of dark discouragement, as well as in his hours of triumph. Without her affection to console him, he would most probably have broken down under the load of immense difficulties which constantly burdened him, and he never would have been able ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... and must now turn to Nature. On every hand, the future was with students of the laws of matter. Often, it was true, he had been tempted by the thought of a literary career; he had written in verse and prose, but with small success. An attempt to compose the Prize Poem was soon abandoned in discouragement; the essay he sent in had not been mentioned. These honours had fallen to Earwaker, with whom it was not easy to compete on such ground. No, he was not born a man of letters. But in science, granted fair opportunity, he might make a name. He might, ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... Battle of Bull Run, opinion was suspended or fluctuating; but in the main one's sympathies conspired with one's information as to the comparative resources of the opponents to produce a considerable degree of confidence. That battle and some other Southern successes acted as a severe check; and discouragement prevailed up to the time when the capture of New Orleans, Grant's advance on the line of the Mississippi, and McClellan's "On to Richmond" march righted the balance. Great uncertainty, however, was still felt; and I should say that afterwards, between the repulse of McClellan and Pope ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... undertaking; but where there is a will there is always a way, and soon it was evident that each had found "a little chore" to do for sweet charity's sake. Not a word was said at the weekly meetings, but the artless faces betrayed all shades of hope, discouragement, pride, and doubt, as their various attempts seemed likely to succeed or fail. Much curiosity was felt, and a few accidental words, hints, or meetings in queer places, were very exciting, though ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott

... intended it should, this speech had given the other a chance to recover himself. The Lieutenant-Governor's habitual poise was already restored, and his voice, as he answered, was quite steady, but eloquent of his desperate discouragement and weariness. ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl

... she says, in one place, 'the better.' 'It is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist, which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in us.' George Eliot pushed this repugnance to criticism beyond the personal reaction of it upon the artist, and more than disparaged its utility, even in the most competent ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) - The Life of George Eliot • John Morley

... countenance" to the King's proposals about the Church, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, and contemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor was it from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, to whom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from a point of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. The surrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. "By that you have also confirmed them the Parliament for ten years; which is as much ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... weight to this disbelief. But whether signals had passed over the wire or not, there could be no doubt that the cable had ceased to respond to the efforts of the electricians, and was a total failure, and the discouragement of nearly every one connected with it ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... passed, years passed, and not a word, not a sign, came from Dr. Cullen. At last, after dangling for more than two years in the uncertainties and perplexities of so strange a situation, Newman was summoned to Dublin. There he found nothing but disorder and discouragement. The laity took no interest in the scheme; the clergy actively disliked it; Newman's authority was disregarded. He appealed to Cardinal Wiseman, and then at last a ray of hope dawned. The cardinal suggested that ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... much, too soon. He was approaching Flavia carefully and delicately as a man striving to close his hand on some frail, elusive creature whose capture he scarcely dares hope possible. And she gave him no help. Her frank gentleness and impersonal cordiality gave neither encouragement nor discouragement, ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram

... the Dissenters; some people, indeed, (which we cannot allow) would have them to be our children, because we both dissent from the Church established, and both agree in abolishing this persecuting Sacramental Test; by which negative discouragement we are both rendered incapable of civil and military employments. However, we cannot but wonder at the bold familiarity of these schismatics, in calling the members of the National Church their brethren and fellow ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... credit for it," went on Dunk. "He meets with a lot of discouragement, and some of the fellows are positively rude to him, but he's always the same—good-natured and willing to put up with it. He's working hard for ...
— Andy at Yale - The Great Quadrangle Mystery • Roy Eliot Stokes

... favor upon your suit. Of course"—he checked Kirk's hasty words—"it is not completely settle, by no means; the young lady is but partly won. However"—he winked one black eye reassuringly— "as friend of the family I bid you not to permit discouragement and despair." ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... in. At first, discouragement took hold of people's minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared on board, made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury. The crew called themselves "out-and-out fools" for being ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne

... pointed to the sea. The hopeless aspect of its moonlit and darkling calm struck me so forcibly that I did not even ask how he proposed to get us out there. I only made a gesture of discouragement. Outside the Casa, my life was not worth ten minutes' purchase. And how could I risk her there? How could I propose to her to follow me to an almost certain death? What could be the issue of such an adventure? ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... blame be laid upon himself without protest or murmuring. He knew better than any one else the terrible cost of life which his unrelenting purpose demanded; but he knew also that the price of relenting, involving the discouragement of failure, the cost of another campaign after the enemy had got breath and new equipment, the possible refusal of the North to try again, was far greater and more humiliating. Little wonder that he was oppressed and silent and moody. Yet he ruled his own spirit ...
— Ulysses S. Grant • Walter Allen

... discouragement were not enough to keep down his boyish gaiety, which he sometimes manifested by teasing his womenfolk. One of his favourite methods of doing this was to station himself on a chair in front of us, and, with his brown eyes lighted up with a whimsical ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez

... Satan, a work to which he manfully set himself. Occasionally I saw Wallace and Jones, but heard them oftener. All the time the breaks grew deeper, till finally Satan had to zigzag his way down and up. Discouragement fastened on me, when from the summit of the next ridge I saw Frank far down the break, with Jones and Wallace not a quarter of a mile away from him. I sent out a long, exultant yell as Satan crashed into the hard, dry wash in the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... lips. It was an official notice of Gurn's promotion to the rank of sergeant when fighting under Lord Beltham in the South African War. Juve read it through—he knew English well—and laid it down with a gesture of discouragement. ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre

... other things, he said that Arkansas had been injured and kept back by generations of exaggerations concerning the mosquitoes here. One may smile, said he, and turn the matter off as being a small thing; but when you come to look at the effects produced, in the way of discouragement of immigration, and diminished values of property, it was quite the opposite of a small thing, or thing in any wise to be coughed down or sneered at. These mosquitoes had been persistently represented as being formidable and lawless; whereas 'the truth is, they are feeble, insignificant ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... our people have achieved so much; that, triumphing over all the hardships of those early pioneers, who struggled in the face of discouragement and difficulties more appalling than those that met Columbus when he turned the prows of his little vessels toward an unknown shore; that, triumphing over perils of starvation, perils of savages, perils of sickness, here on the sunny slope of the Pacific they have established civil ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... century they had sat there unchanging. Sat there all day long, and had been lucky to catch half as many fish as I had done in fifteen minutes. And glaring ocular demonstration did not shake his faith in the methods of his ancestors. I began to understand the hopeless discouragement with which my host talks of the "Native Question." The Arabs are starving off because the French have stolen their land. But the fact remains that most of the natives have more land than the colonists. An Arab will starve to death on a piece of land which will support two French families, simply ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... burthen, carried eighty-two bronze cannon, and had a crew of twelve hundred men. The other three apostles carried each fifty guns and four hundred men. The armament of the other war-ships varied from fifty-two to eighteen guns each. The presence of such a formidable force might have seemed a motive for discouragement, or at least of caution. On the contrary, the adventurers dashed at once upon their prey; thus finding a larger booty than they had dared to expect. There was but a brief engagement. At the outset a Dutch ship accidentally blew up, and gave much encouragement to the Spaniards. Their joy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... came of the retreat of the Army of the Loire, great discouragement crept over the garrison. The Mobiles from the country, who had never expected to be shut up in Paris for months, began to pine for their families and villages. What might not be happening to them? and they ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a creature of poverty, hovels, ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... sidewalk barefoot; thereby scandalizing a whole houseful of prim damsels across the street, who indignantly pulled down their curtains. Such a hand-shaking and back-patting as ensued! All the hardships and discouragement we had endured on our last season's expedition seemed to bear an exultant harvest in this our ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens

... irresistible as time itself. I also reflected how often the poet Whittier must have walked in that same path; how dear to him must be that silent flood with its elm-trees, and great rolling hills; and how in times of darkness and discouragement he must have come to it for strength and consolation. The beauty of a river depends very much on its clearness and purity. The Rhine and the Tiber are more famous than the Merrimac; but their water is muddy ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... did much to rouse the garrison from this state of discouragement. She glided from post to post, from tower to tower of the old gray fortress, as a gleam of light passes over a clouded landscape, and touching its various points in succession, calls them out to beauty and effect. Sorrow and fear sometimes make sufferers eloquent. ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... it remove the obstacles before your pathway. Find out how much it strengthens, invigorates, inspires you. Ask yourself how much it encourages, enheartens, emboldens you. Put down on paper every slightest item of good, or help, or inspiration it is to you, and on the other hand, the harm, the discouragement, the evil, the fears it brings to you, ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... most implicated in this debasing and demoralizing traffic. Indeed it appears from the best information obtained on the subject, that since the vigilance of our cruizers has comparatively put a stop to the trade on the west coast of Africa—where it has received a great discouragement—it has been greatly extended on the east. Could it but have been foreseen by our Government that their efforts upon the west coast, would in proportion as they were successful, only tend to drive the traders in human flesh ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... discouragement was brought by Ingham, who returned from Frederica on April 10th, with a message from Charles Wesley begging his brother to come to his relief. He told a woeful story of persecution by the settlers, and injustice from Oglethorpe ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... niche beside the watch-dogs. Amuladdin, the leading prince of Kedar, met with no better fate: he was overcome, in spite of the assistance rendered him by Adiya, the queen of a neighbouring tribe, and was also carried away into captivity. His defeat completed the discouragement of the tribes who still remained unsubdued. They implored mercy, which Assur-bani-pal granted to them, although he deposed most of their sheikhs, and appointed as their ruler that Abiyate who had dwelt at his court since the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... shown that amongst democratic nations in time of peace the military profession is held in little honor and indifferently followed. This want of public favor is a heavy discouragement to the army; it weighs down the minds of the troops, and when war breaks out at last, they cannot immediately resume their spring and vigor. No similar cause of moral weakness occurs in aristocratic armies: there the officers are never lowered either in their own eyes or ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... felt always something sinister, or at least something hidden, which took the shape of an advantage gained. I tried to meet her with perfect pleasantness, but it grew difficult. In my circumstances I was very open to influences of discouragement or apprehension; indeed the trouble was to fight them off. This intangible evil however ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell

... of us cannot concentrate at all; any slight distraction suffices to disrupt and destroy the whole train of thought. A good many can concentrate for a few hours, for a week or so, for two or three months. But there comes a small achievement and it satisfies, or a small discouragement and it disheartens. Only to the rare few is given the power to concentrate steadily, year in and year out, through good ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... "gold belt." Gloomy skies continued to fill the imaginative ones with forebodings, and all day they could be seen in groups about the village discussing ways and means. Quarrels broke out, and parties disbanded in discouragement and bitterness. The road to the golden river seemed to grow longer, and the precious sand more elusive, from day to day. Here at Hazleton, where they had hoped to reach a gold region, nothing was doing. Those who had visited the Kisgagash Mountains to the north ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland

... a little more advanced than he is. Keep him out of the concert recitations, where his tendency to haste would work both personal and social harm. Refrain from giving him assistance in his tasks until he has learned from them something of the real lesson of discouragement, and then help him only by degrees, and by showing him one step at a time, with constant renewals of his own efforts. Shield him with the greatest pains from distractions of all kinds, for even the things and events about ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin

... tended to a general diminution of the efforts of genius for some time; while the banishment of Ovid, it is probable, and the capital punishment of a subsequent poet, for censuring the character of Agamemnon, operated towards the farther discouragement of poetical exertions. There now existed no circumstance to counterbalance these disadvantages. Genius no longer found a patron either in the emperor or his minister; and the gates of the palace were shut against all who cultivated the elegant pursuits of the Muses. Panders, ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... supposed. For several hundred miles her intake of water had steadily increased. We had toiled at the paddles with the water halfway to our knees much of the time; though now and then—by spasms—we bailed her dry. She had become a floating lump of discouragement, and still fourteen hundred ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt



Words linked to "Discouragement" :   dismay, disheartenment, despair, dissuasion, intimidation, encouragement



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